Gist of the Gemini

Years ago, I had a book that gave astronomical descriptions of the planets. I found that helpful in trying to sort out some of the astrological lore concerning what sorts of things planets "rule." The main thing I recall is that Uranus is the only planet that does not spin like a top because of the tilt of its axis. No, it more or less rolls like a ball around the Sun. So Uranus is eccentric as planets go and rules eccentric things and unexpected things etc. This suddenly made a lot more sense to me. Gravity is a property of space, not objects in space. If it were a property of objects in space, then planets would all clump together like magnets in a junk drawer and they don't. Instead, they orbit the Sun in a fairly orderly fashion, though at different distances and different speeds and they each have some different characteristics. And, yet, Uranus is notably different from the other planets in a way that presumably would reverberate differently in the spac...

I have long joked that "People like me probably invented religion." I tend to see motive in things that happen in life, like "The universe PLANNED that and did that to me intentionally." I'm the kind of person who cusses at a videogame when I lose and loudly complains that "The videogame doesn't like me! It's being MEAN to me!" No, I'm not being serious. I'm not actually insane -- at least not THAT insane. I realize that's not why I lost at a videogame. I tend to surround myself with people who are NOT like me in that regard. I know this can go weird and bad places if it gets amplified instead of having checks and balances applied. I'm not a big fan of religion. I think it was probably useful at one time, but with 8 billion people on the planet, it seems to have also jumped the shark at some point. People who are religious seem to want to amplify such tendencies in me in a way that I don't like and don't con...

I haven't done a lot of SERIOUS astrology in recent years and I didn't write down my ideas about rulership. I had this fairly elaborate set of ideas about how to group stuff and yadda and I don't really remember all that stuff. Maybe over time more of it will come back to me. Here are some hypotheses I DO remember having about how we should consider updating our rulerships: As noted previously, we really need to assign rulership to the Earth. I think Taurus makes the most sense, but someone should look into that and see if data supports this idea. Venus is listed as ruler of both Taurus and Libra. I think it doesn't make sense for EITHER ONE. I propose that Libra is ruled by the asteroid belt. I've always felt Librans tend to be kind of scattered and this Asteroid Belt from what I gather was supposedly a planet in the making that fell apart . There is enough mass there for a planet, it's just scattered . SOME astologers already track Chiron in the cha...

I had a friend who was very busty. I suggested that an old-fashioned solution like a corset might work better to get her the degree of support she needed. She went to a specialist to try to find a solution because she really had huge breasts and it was an issue. To my amusement, the specialist also recommended a corset as a means to get the support she needed. True story: She had paid me a few bucks to cast her astrological chart and I concluded that an old fashioned form of support, like a corset, would be a good idea based on the aspects in her chart. This is part of why it amused me that when she got a second opinion from a specialist in such things, the specialist recommended the exact same thing I had recommended based on her Natal Chart. I chose to leave that detail out of that anecdote because it's basically asking people to not take me seriously. Years and years ago, there was some TV show that revolved around some kids in high school and, I guess, their families. ...

My understanding is that most Japanese do not believe in Western astrology and, yet, it's a common topic of discussion. They routinely tell people what their Sun sign is in casual conversation. I think most likely what is going on there is that they don't find it threatening because they don't take it seriously, so it's a good topic for making small talk, and it also solves a somewhat unique social challenge for them. In Japanese language and culture, my understanding is you address people using honorifics on a routine basis and there is a long list of honorifics to choose from. Which one is correct depends in part on which of you is older. All well, fine and good except that it's rude to ask someone their age or birth date. So how does one determine who is older and who is younger? Sometimes this is obvious. A child addressing a grown-up, for example. Anyone can tell at a glance who is older and who is younger. But what if you are all school children in t...

I actually had a Tarot deck in my youth, one PROPERLY gifted to me -- not purchased by me -- so I could PROPERLY use it and blah blah blah. Tarot never really clicked with me the way astrology does, in part because astrology is highly mathematical and I was a big time math geek in my youth. So overly wide orbs are a pet peeve of mine. When astrologers use TEN DEGREE orbs, they are just telling people "Oh, astrology is hand-wavy BULLSHIT with lots of room for seeing what you WANT TO SEE." when in reality it's very mathematical and it takes advanced math to properly pursue this art. True Story: I bought my first expensive trigonometric calculator -- around $100 at the time, which was a LOT of money for me -- to cast natal charts more easily. What is an "orb"? A big part of astrology is seeing how things interact, both within a single chart and between two charts. Aspects are a large part of how you try to gain insight into those interactions and aspec...

I grew up in Georgia where my primary exposure to pineapple was canned pineapple, plus the occasional "fresh" whole pineapple during the short window in the summer when that was available at some kind of reasonable price. (HA HA HA -- more like half rotted after traveling so far.) And I was NOT a fan. I was like "Who would WANT to eat this GARBAGE? WHY????" Then I moved to the West Coast at some point, had access to ACTUAL somewhat fresh pineapple for much of the year at some kind of reasonable price and for a time became a zealous convert to my new religion of eating fresh pineapple. (I assume if you go to Hawaii, where most of it is grown, and eat it there, you would go "WOW. Pineapples on the West Coast are AWFUL compared to this.") "Popular" astrology is kind of like canned pineapple. It's intended to give access to a wider audience but all it does is give it a bad reputation as the garbage that popular astrology really is. So ...

In my youth, back when dead tree books were all the rage, I probably had two shelves of astrology books. I probably had more than one by some author whose name I no longer recall who, IIRC, billed herself as not only an astrologer but some kind of mystic or spiritual person or some such. At least at the moment, I no longer remember ANYTHING at all about anything she said about astrology except this ONE thing: She said we should start putting Earth in astrological charts because when humans start living on Mars we will include Earth in astrological charts for people born on Mars. And her PROPOSAL for where we should place the Earth is that it should be 180 degrees away from the Sun. It should be OPPOSITE the Sun in all charts of Earth-born humans. Color me shocked and appalled. How she ever became a professional astrologer, I don't know.[1] Astrology is a geocentric model of our solar system. It views the relationships of everything in the chart through a lens of how it...

Do you see what I see? A star, a star, dancing in the night With a tail as big as a kite It's a beautiful song, but I have news for the Catholic church which has (according to comments on HN: 1 ; 2 ) banned all forms of divination, including astrology, which I guess explains why so many Catholics and other Christians are such assholes to me personally on the topic of astrology. And that news is that the above song is evidence of the history of the Christian religion and how it was founded on a belief in astrology and that the birth of their savior was foretold ("divination") and the world would KNOW when this event occurred due to the stars in the sky TELLING us it had finally occurred (aka ASTROLOGY). YOUR RELIGION that is so dismissive of my belief in astrology is POSITED on a belief in astrology. YOUR RELIGION to THIS DAY celebrates the fact that we supposedly "know" Christ was a special person sent by God because the stars in the sky TOLD us he...